what, in certain circumstances, he or she would do, and unerringly credited the other with the performance of these surmised deeds. Thus leisure, which might have been profitably spent by either, was wasted by both in courteous ambuscades and counter or parallel schemes, so that the private habit of one was a perpetual cancelling of the private desires of the other, and a state of exasperation existed between them which, as it could not come to the surface and be faced or downfaced, ended by being a very poison to life. [Pg 23] In settling out these terms it is more proper to refer them to Maeve than to the king, for in the large conduct of his affairs he could escape from his household and forget in the Council Hall or the Judgement Seat that which his wife was given only the greater leisure to remember in her Sunny Chamber or among her servants and sycophants. But matrimony had been poisoned for them at the very fountain, and a dear, detestable memory for Maeve was that her [Pg 24] husband had outraged her before he married her, and that he had taken her then and thereafter in her own despite. [Pg 24] If it had been a question of morality she might have forgiven Conachúr almost before forgiveness could be prayed for, but it was not a moral violence she raged against. She was a lady to whom nothing in the world was so dear and instant as she was herself, and that any man should lay an uninvited hand upon her outraged her sense of propriety as no general idea could have done. But she was as courageous as she was beautiful and as unblushing as either. The world might have heard her statement of the virtues she demanded in a husband, and if the world was alarmed the young queen permitted it to be as it pleased, on condition that it did not interfere with her, nor question her wish. “My husband,” she said, “must be free from cowardice, and free from avarice, and free from jealousy; for I am brave in battles and combats, and it would be a discredit to my husband if I were braver than he. I am generous and a great giver of gifts, and it would be a disgrace to my husband if he [Pg 25] were less generous than I am. And,” she continued, “it would not suit me at all if he were jealous, for I have never denied myself the man I took a fancy to, and I never shall whatever husband I have now or may have hereafter.” [Pg 25] It is possible that her husband did not fulfil these conditions
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